The agrifood question and rural development dynamics in Brazil and China: towards a protective ‘countermovement’

ABSTRACT

This paper explores some features of the development paths taken by Brazil and China (two member countries of the BRICS grouping) in the current context of the crisis of neoliberal globalization and transformation of the political and economic world order. The authors use Polanyi’s ‘double movement’ thesis to argue that newly emerging rural development (RD) dynamics in China and Brazil are part of a protective ‘countermovement’, driven by actors and institutions responding to the contradictions of the concentration and internationalization of agrifood systems. However, the direction and scope of these countermovements are still open; their transformative potential should be viewed in Gramsci’s terms as a struggle for hegemony the outcome of which depends on the concrete ‘balance of social forces’. First, the paper characterizes the impacts of China’s rise on Brazil’s development, which subsequently found its economy under threat of reprimarization and deindustrialization. The paper then sketches some stylized facts of production and consumption within the Brazil–China soy–meat complex, a key element of the current global food regime, with a focus on corporate control of the soy–meat value chain, and its negative consequences. Finally, the paper identifies the key roles that actors and institutions linked to peasants and family farmers are playing in the RD dynamics of each country. Although China and Brazil represent two very different realities, the comparison shows that critical rural and agrifood issues are indeed moving onto the centre stage of the contemporary ‘double movement’.

KEYWORDS:

• Brazil–China soy–meat complex
• rural policies
• farming practices
• production–consumption relations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Another vision of the ‘China model’ and the ‘lessons’ that other developing countries, especially those of Latin America, can learn from the Chinese experience can be found in the works of the former president of the World Bank, Justin Yifu Lin and his collaborators (Lin & Treichel, 2012), and several others.

2. There is a significant literature in Brazil and elsewhere about the effects of China’s rise on the Brazilian economy and other Latin American economies. For our purpose, it is sufficient to cite some works that document and analyze the stylized facts briefly outlined in this paper: Sauer et al., 2017; Jenkins, 2015; Jenkins & Barbosa, 2012; Curado, 2015; Ray & Gallagher, 2015; Cunha et al., 2012; Medeiros, 2011; Cano, 2012; Armony & Strauss, 2012.

3. The main controversies involve: the ‘developmental outsourcing’ purpose of Chinese overseas land-based investments, in which the state plays a key role (Hofman & Ho, 2012); the extent, character, origins, and directions of land-grabbing in Latin America (Borras, Franco, Goméz, Kay, & Spoor, 2012); the impacts of FDI land purchases on land prices, land market dynamics, and land concentration in Brazil; the motivations and interests of the investors; the expansion of the agricultural frontier driven by soy and sugarcane, forestry plantation, cattle ranching and mineral extraction; and the legal measures and regulatory controls taken by the Brazilian state to limit foreigners’ access to land (Sauer & Leite, 2012; Wilkinson, Reydon, & Di Sabbato, 2013).

4. The origins of this coalition go back the 1999 currency crisis, when Cardoso saw the activation of primary exports as a strategy of adjustment to the neoliberal order, able to generate trade surpluses to support the balance of payments and control inflation. In the politico-institutional sphere, this position is represented by the so-called Bancada Ruralista (Ruralist Block), officially the Agriculture Parliamentary Front, a set of parliamentary representatives from across the party political system ranging from the far right-wing to the center left-wing, united by their defense of agribusiness. Although some of these representatives supported the progressive PT (Workers’ Party) government (in itself a contradictory position), most have historically been identified as conservative or even reactionary.

5. An oversimplified representation of this phenomenon is that the standard Chinese food-consumption pattern of 8:1:1, or eight parts grain, one part meat/ poultry/fish, and one part vegetables/fruit, has been changing rapidly towards a 4:3:3 pattern of four parts grain, three parts meat/fish (and eggs and milk), and three parts vegetables/fruit (Huang, 2011, p. 4).

6. Wilkinson and Wesz (2013) stress that the Chinese interest in acquiring land in Brazil (sometimes with investments in crushing plants and port terminals) is closely linked to its ‘need for feed’ and its strategy to exert direct control over the soy commodity complex. Schneider (2014) describes such land deals and agribusiness investments as ‘meat grabs’ rather than using ‘food security land grabs’, the more common term in the literature. However, as Oliveira (2015) notes, while Chinese–Brazilian value flows around the soy complex are displacing North Atlantic agribusiness power in a South/ East direction, the ‘old hubs’ of capital (US, EU, Japan) still play very important roles.

7. Since 2013 and the ‘Journeys of June’, and even more strongly after the impeachment (or parliamentary coup) of 2016 that ousted President Dilma Rousseff and put Michel Temer in her place, Brazilian political and policy landscapes are going through a period of regressive changes producing great uncertainty. But this period is not covered in our analysis.

Additional information

Funding

The work undertaken by Fabiano Escher in researching and writing this article would not have been possible without a doctoral (2012–2016) scholarship provided by the Brazilian Higher Learning Agency Capes (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior), and also a BICAS small grant for which he is grateful.

Notes on contributors

Fabiano Escher

Fabiano Escher is a post-doctoral researcher at the Development, Agriculture and Society (CPDA) Graduate Program of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), and the National Institute of Science and Technology on Public Policies, Strategy and Development (INCT PPED), Brazil. His research interests include peasant and family farming, agrifood systems and rural development in Brazil and China from a comparative perspective, combining political economy, institutional economics and economic sociology. Email: [email protected].

Sergio Schneider

Sergio Schneider is a Professor of Rural Sociology and Development in the Rural Development (PGDR) and Sociology (PPGS) Graduate Programmes of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil. His research interests include the agrifood system, family farming, rural development, rural sociology, sociology of food and development sociology. Email: [email protected].

Jingzhong Ye

Jingzhong Ye is a Professor of Development Studies and Deputy Dean at the College of Humanities and Development Studies (COHD), China Agricultural University (CAU), China. His research interests include development intervention and rural transformation, rural ‘left behind’ populations, rural education, land politics, and sociology of agriculture. Email: [email protected].